


Day Boy

by ZaliaChimera



Series: Growing Pains [1]
Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - No Zombie Apocalypse, Catholic Character, Catholic School, Cricket, Friendship, Gen, Roman Catholicism, Season/Series 02 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-14 14:14:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16914420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZaliaChimera/pseuds/ZaliaChimera
Summary: Jack and Simon meet after a friendly inter-school cricket match and become friends.





	Day Boy

**Author's Note:**

> Contains spoilers for Season 2 and Simon's backstory

Sister Janice gets him permission to join the cricket team when they play at the local high school. Sister Christine, a stern woman whose face has seen more disapproval than laughter, doesn’t like it, but Sister Christine doesn’t much like him in general. She’s the person who sends weekly reports home to his nan, the ones that tell her how he’d got caned for distracting people during prayers (the floor was cold and hard and he hadn’t been the only one fidgeting!) but never how he’d got a gold star in Latin. They let him go with stern warnings to watch himself and ‘one misstep Mr. Lauchlan’.

He sits at the back of the minibus and makes himself unobtrusive in case they find a reason to keep him back.

The local school is an ugly squat grey building which is about as different to Saint Thomas’s Catholic Boy’s school as you can get, with it’s old stone buildings and ivy covered walls, but the kids run out onto the cricket pitch just as eagerly as Simon’s team do. There are girls too, sitting on the grass at the edge of the pitch in skirts and blue gingham dresses and he almost misses a catch staring at one girl who has the longest, prettiest legs that he’s ever seen, lightly tanned by the sun.

He forces his attention back to the game just in time to catch a cheeky grin from the opposing batsman; a kid with hair somewhere between blond and red, his face dusted with freckles.

They win narrowly, which’ll please and infuriate the house master who teaches PE, and after changing back into uniform, the boarders climb onto the minibus to head back to school. The day boys, Simon and a few other lads, make their own way home. Most of them get picked up by their parents at the school gate. Some of their parents had even been there watching the game.

It’s only days like this when Simon even feels a pang of hurt anymore. He’d imagined it loads as a little kid; his mum and dad- who always looked a bit like whatever film of TV star Simon was idolising that week- pulling up in a posh car to take him home. Home which was sometimes a cottage and sometimes a castle and occasionally a spaceship but he figured that he’d been eight so that could be forgiven.

He sets off walking. It’s a pretty nice day anyway, sunny and warm and the next bus isn’t for half an hour and he can be home by then, especially if he doesn’t mind risking a scolding by crossing the fields and cutting through the woods. Besides, there’s a couple of girls walking his way and if he keeps just the right distance back, it totally doesn’t look like he’s staring at their legs.

“Hey! Oi! Wait up!”

He pauses just as he’s about the cross the road, and turns to see freckle boy from the cricket match running towards him, his sports bag slung over his shoulder. He slows down as he approaches Simon, grinning widely.

“You’re from Saint Tom’s right?”

“Saint Thomas’s,” Simon corrects automatically, because he’s had his legs rapped a few times for shortening the names of the Saints. Apparently nuns look unfavourably on calling Mary Magdalen 'Mags’.

The boy rolls his eyes, but he’s still smiling. “Whatever. But you are right?”

Simon looks down at his uniform; the blazer tied in a messy knot around his waist and the crucifix around his neck, and smirks at him. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

“Thought you all went back on the bus,” the kid says as they fall into step alongside each other. He’s a good couple of inches shorter than Simon, and stocky where Simon’s lanky. All elbows and knees, his nan says, must take after that man.

That’s how she always talks about his dad. 'That man.’ Simon doesn’t even know his name.

Simon shrugs, hefting his back further up onto his shoulders. “They’re the boarders, the ones who live there. I just go home on a night.”

Damn, those girls are out of sight now. Must’ve turned off while they were talking.

“So you live close by?” the boy asks, blue eyes bright with interest.

“Couple of villages over. Not that far. I normally get the bus home.”

“Cool! Me too. Want to walk back together?”

Simon’s a little taken aback by the eagerness in the other boy’s voice. No-one’s ever that keen to hang out with him, just in case his reputation rubs off. They’re all bloody hypocrites but what can you do?

“Sure,” he says nonchalantly. “Could I stop you anyway?”

“Probably not,” the boy says cheerfully. “I’m Jack by the way.”

“Simon. You always make friends with the people who kick your arse at cricket?” he asks, and there’s no-one around to scold him for bad language right now. The time between school and getting home is his alone.

“It was jut a friendly!” Jack protests. “Now, if it had been the Under 16’s cup it might be a different story.”

“Not gonna win that if we’re beating you already,” Simon replies, matching Jack’s grin with a challenging one of his own.

Jack clutches his chest dramatically, giving him a scandalised look. “Ow! That hurts. You wound me, Sir!”

Simon can’t help but snort in laughter at that. “Been hit in the head by a few cricket balls there, Jacky boy?”

“Lies and slander!” Jack says and then starts laughing. After a moment, Simon joins him and oh, it feels good. It’s not like the nuns disapprove of laughter, they just usually take it as a sign that he’s done something awful which is only true half of the time.

“You want to go to the shop?” Jack asks once they’ve recovered enough to keep walking. “We could get ice-cream.”

Simon pauses thoughtfully, chewing on his lip, because he should probably get back, although nan doesn’t usually care as long as he does his chores and says his prayers and doesn’t skip out on Sunday Mass.

“Yeah, alright.”

“So, what’s it like at your school?” Jack asks. “It always seems dead posh. I mean, you wear blazers and stuff.”

Simon looks Jack over for a moment, taking in the grass-stained trousers and somewhat ragged sweatshirt, frayed at the cuffs, and shrugs. “It’s just school,” he says, because he doesn’t really have anything to compare it with. “Lessons and tests and well… not girls,” he says with a soft sigh.

Jack makes a noncomittal noise which earns him a slightly puzzled look from Simon. It wasn’t exactly the shock and horror that he’d expected. Not when all the boys in his year at school were obsessed with girls. There was a serious underground trade in contraband, especially amongst the boarders who couldn’t get to the shops, and Simon had made a fair few quid selling pictures out of magazines that he’d smuggled into school.

“So it’s not like Harry Potter then?” Jack asks, sounding kind of disappointed.

“I dunno. Haven’t read them.”

Jack looks at him like he’s grown a second head. “You’ve never read them? How can you not have read them?”

“I go to Catholic school, Jack,” he says, clapping the other boy on the shoulder. “It’s run by nuns and priests. Don’t think they’re big on the whole witchcraft thing, even in fiction.”

“It’s just a book,” Jack says and he still sounds pretty horrified.

“So’s the Bible and look how seriously they take that.”

Jack snorts and gives him a thoughtful look. “I could lend them to you.”

“I think my nan would actually murder me. Or get someone in to perform an exorcism.”

“So wizards are awful but like… demons are fine?” Jack grimaces, sticking out his tongue and he’s silent for a few moments, right up until they reach the corner shop. The bell rings when they step inside and they head to the freezer cabinet. “You could come around my house to read them.”

“What?” Simon blinks, taken aback by the offer. “We’ve only just met.”

Jack sort of hunches in on himself and the look that he gives Simon is almost shy. “We could be friends though, right? I mean, you seem pretty cool.”

Simon’s hand hovers over the ice-cream cabinet, torn between a Calypo and a '99, lips pressed hard together. He likes people well enough, but he wouldn’t say he’s got anyone he’d consider real friends, not of the 'lend-you-stuff-and-visit-your-house’ variety anyway.

He snatches up the ice lolly and turns back to Jack whose face has fallen at his silence. He sighs inwardly. Like he could refuse a look like that. “Well,” he says with a teasing wink, “can’t fault your taste in mates.”

Jack positively beams at him, and if Simon had had any doubts, this would’ve been enough to convince him that Jack hadn’t been asking just out of politeness.

They pay for their ice-creams and keep walking through the village until Jack has to turn off onto his street. Simon’s still got another ten minutes he reckons before he’s home. They both stop there, loath to part ways and let it end. Jack studiously licks his fingertips clean on chocolate ice-cream, pink tongue swirling around the pads of his fingers, drawing them slowly into his mouth. It makes Simon flush slightly watching him. He’s not entirely sure why.

“So,” Jack says, “you want to walk back together tomorrow?”

It’ll take him longer of course, leave less time for homework and TV. But Jack’s got this hopeful look on his face and there’s the promise of illicit books.

He smiles slowly and nods. “I’d love to.”

“Great!” Jack says. “Meet you outside school then? I’ll wait for you!”

“Sure,” Simon replies, his grin just widening. “Tomorrow.”

The rest of the walk home he feels like he’s itching, something inside his skin and it’s there all through dinner with nan and doing the washing up and bedtime prayers. He’s never been so keen to go to school before, and he’s even keener than normal to get out of it in the afternoon.

He’s almost afraid to approach the gate of Jack’s school the next day, just in case he’d made a mistake, or if Jack had just been being nice and didn’t really meet it. But there’s a familiar red-head sat on the wall waiting when he arrives, legs swinging carelessly, and Jack gives him a cheery grin.

“Alright Simon!”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m good.”


End file.
